Last night I was struggling because I noticed that my painful shoulder issue is related to the fact that I’m not shifting to an inner flow for the solution. There’s something on the other side that I’m not catching up with.

As a consequence, my attention to the reflection in the outer causes the shoulder imbalance. There’s a kind of peculiar mannerism in me that still holds on to that, and I’m not aware of exactly what it is.

Essentially, I could understand it if there really still was some outer approach that I needed to recognize, but I don’t think there is. Yet, with the inner trying to come through in some way, and the outer struggling to keep hold, it tears me up inside.

I notice this at night. One of the reasons I can sometimes sleep with the pain is because, deep down inside, I know that this is something that I can’t solve in an outer way, I have to solve it in an inner way. But, depending on what level of sleep I’m in, I also believe that there’s something else that I should be doing in the outer.

So there’s a contradiction, or struggle. In other words, I don’t shift into the whole like I might. This causes me to realize that I can’t keep trying to fight things, thinking that approach will work. It’s hard on my inner sensibilities when I don’t adhere to them, and that causes the physical body to have to go through a lot of anguish.

Basically, what I’m talking about is when a person chooses to set something aside, or suppress it, as opposed to dealing with it. Let’s say it’s a trauma, and it affects the body. It can cause the body to break down, or you can get blindsided in some more subtle way that could become very serious.

It shows the nature of how the inner works, and how the outer is just a reflection of that. I’ve got to be careful if I’m going to go on (outer) tangents, when I should know better in terms of the inner. The body gets beat up because, through development, the body is actually getting more sensitized, which means that my sensitization is based upon getting closer and closer to an interconnectivity. So I feel the imbalance and this is like a friction that tears away at my wellbeing – on a physical level.

If I don’t notice this contradiction, then the body can stay unconscious. But, if I start to notice the imbalances, they tear at me. That’s why getting more conscious or sensitive is actually harder on the body, because I feel that movement inside and that movement inside has to be handled, or grounded. When we become more sensitive, even what we eat is different in order to try to appeal to the subtler aspects that are afoot.

Eating like I did yesterday, ribs and a greasy pulled-pork sandwich, was taxing to the system. But what really made it taxing was I added all the popcorn to it, which is another thing that can create heartburn, and the combination set off something inside that was very painful most of the night, like something deep in the esophagus. I was getting up and eating applesauce and everything else, but I wasn’t really able to soothe it very well.

So, between the heartburn and the fact that I had no inner solution for my shoulder, i.e., still debating whether something more can be done in the outer rather than shifting it from within, I was going back and forth and in a lot of physical pain.

But it’s kind of like our friend’s example, when he says his blood pressure is down because he’s no longer taking things so seriously. And there’s truth in that.

We wreak such havoc on ourselves. I mean, sometimes I’m able to go somewhere within, to a level that knows the shoulder is part of the inner process, and I’m able to coexist with it. But when I don’t, and I still relate to something in the outer, then the shoulder pain does a number on me.

Of course, the degree I buy into an outer solution as a way of looking at any issue, is the degree to which I dull my consciousness and end up fighting against the reflection, as if that’s real. This approach with the outer is preventing me from letting go on the inner.

So I struggle, and in struggling I remain confused. I can know that everything in life works from the inner to the outer, but to truly live that is a natural knowingness that comes from this inner state of the higher self.

It’s not yet possible for me, so I tear myself down physically by over identifying with how I am, in everything, while I don’t quite acknowledge the inner presence. This contradiction just feeds the inner struggle.